Stephen Coonts - Combat

Chiang closed the cell door, knocked out the lightbulb above it, and joined them outside as Shizong finished pulling the blouse over his head. The night was still except for the occasional boat whistle outside the harbor somewhere. So far there were no alarms, but the next patrol would be at the gate in under four minutes.

Joseph and Xu hustled Shizong down the walk. Chiang closed the steel door and wedged it shut. The lock was gone, but from a distance in the dark the damage might not be noticeable. At least they hoped it wouldn’t be.

Zhou powered the gate open, and as soon as the other four were safely through he hit the button to close and relock it, came out of the guardhouse on the run and just managed to slip through the narrowing opening before the gate clicked home.

The lone sentry came around the corner fifty meters away. Joseph and the others raced across the road and dived for cover in the ditch. The son of a bitch was two minutes early, Joseph thought bitterly.

He laid his submachinegun aside and pulled out a stiletto. If need be he was going to have to take the guard out. But silently. The others understood, and got ready to cover him.

It seemed to take an eternity before the guard reached the gate. He said something that they couldn’t quite make out, then peered inside. After several moments he shook his head and continued along the fence past the section that had been cut and reconnected just minutes before.

Joseph released the pent-up breath he’d been holding, sheathed his stiletto, and picked up his gun.

The only thing that they had not been able to find out was how often the gate guard was supposed to check in with base security. Whatever that schedule might be they were racing against it now.

When the sentry finally turned the far corner, they jumped up and raced the rest of the way down to the dry dock, keeping as low as they could. Xu and Chiang went down the ladder first, followed by Shizong and Joseph and finally Zhou.

Fifteen minutes later they crossed over the submarine net, and made their way past the commercial docks and through the fishing fleet. The weather had begun to calm down, but it wasn’t until they were well outside the harbor and could start the outboard, that Joseph allowed himself to relax.

“It seems that you’ve actually done it,” Shizong said. He smiled. “Congratulations, gentlemen. But now, as the Americans would say, the fat is in the fire.”

Joseph laughed. “Indeed it is,” he said. “I didn’t know that you lived in the United States.”

“It’s been a secret. But I spent three years in the Silicon Valley as a spy for Chinese Intelligence.”

Joseph decided that nothing would ever surprise him again. “Tell me, do you know anything about Superman comics?”

Kirk Cullough McGarvey, Deputy Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, showed his credentials at the door three stories beneath the ground floor even though the civilian guard recognized him.

“Good morning, Mr. McGarvey, how’s it out there?” the Secret Service officer asked.

“Hot and muggy, Brian, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.”

“Worst place in the world to build a capital city.”

“Amen,” McGarvey agreed. He entered the basement situation room and took his place next to Tom Roswell, director of the National Security Agency. At fifty, McGarvey certainly wasn’t the youngest man ever to hold the third-highest job in American intelligence, but he was the most fit and had more field experience than all his predecessors put together. He’d worked for the Company in one capacity or another for the past twenty-five years: sometimes on the payroll, at other times freelance. But in the parlance of the go-go of days of the sixties and seventies at the height of the Cold War, he’d been a shooter. An assassin. A killer. The ultimate arbiter. Now he was the spy finally come in from the cold.

There wasn’t a man or woman on either side of the Atlantic or Pacific who’d ever looked into his startlingly green, sometimes gray, eyes who’d ever come away unchanged. At a little over six feet, with a broad, honest, at times even friendly, face, he still maintained the physique of an athlete because he swam or ran nearly every day, and he worked out at least twice a week with the CIA’s fencing team. His enemies feared him, and his friends and allies revered him. An old nemesis had once said that although Mac was an anachronism in this high-tech day and age, he was still a force to be reckoned with. “Never, ever underestimate the man. If you do, he’s likely to hand you your balls on a platter.”

The long conference table was filled with the President’s civilian and military advisors this morning. Among them were all four of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretaries of State and Defense; representatives from all the law-enforcement and intelligence services, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Defense Intelligence Agency, along with the National Reconnaissance Office, which was responsible for all the photographic data received from our KeyHole and Jupiter satellite systems as well as a host of others. His National Security Advisor, Dennis Berndt, and his Chief of Staff, Anthony Lang, were also present. All the big dogs , McGarvey thought. But he wasn’t surprised.

Roswell had been talking to the FBI’s Associate Director, Bob Armstrong. He turned to McGarvey. “You giving the briefing this morning, Mac?”

“Gene will start us off.”

Eugene Carpenter was the Secretary of State. Nearing eighty, he was the oldest man in government, but everyone respected his intellectually astute, though usually practical, views. He was sitting slumped in his chair lost in his own thoughts.

“If we don’t watch our step, this business over Taiwan is going to jump up and bite us on the ass, because the Chinese sure as hell aren’t going to forget the Nanchong .”

“Just like the Maine , is that what you’re saying?” McGarvey asked.

“Worked for us,” Roswell said.

The FF502 Nanchong was a PRC frigate that had been destroyed overnight fifty miles off the southwest coast of Taiwan in international waters. The Chinese claimed that it was attacked by a Taiwanese gunboat or perhaps a submarine, while Taiwan denied any involvement. The PRC’s state-controlled media were already clamoring for retribution, and the Chinese military had been brought to the highest state of readiness they’d been in since the Vietnam War.

The President walked in, and everyone stood until he had taken his seat. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. It was the same affliction that every president since FDR had suffered; the job was a tough one, and it took its toll. He gave McGarvey a nod.

“People, let’s get started, I have some tough calls to make and I’m going to need your help this morning.” He turned to the Secretary of State. “Gene?”

Carpenter looked up as if out of a daze, and he sat up with a visible effort. He looked pale and drawn, in even greater need of rest than the President.

“Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here this morning because of an incident last night in the East China Sea in which a People’s Republic Of China warship was blown up and sunk with all hands lost. I’m going to leave the actual briefing to Mr. McGarvey, who warned us two months ago that something like this was bound to happen. But there’s something that you all need to know before he gets started. Ever since the most recent round of trouble between mainland China and Taiwan started two months ago, we’ve been trying to find a way to keep the situation out there stable.”

Carpenter passed a hand across his eyes. “It’s no secret that we’ve not done a very good job of it. Eight weeks ago, in response to a PRC naval exercise in the area, we moved our Seventh Fleet out of Yokosuka: the George Washington and her battle group north of Taiwan and the Eisenhower and her support group to the south. Our committment, of course, was and still is to honor our pledge to keep the East China sea-lanes open.